


Vows

by Lady_in_Red



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/M, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A chance remark forces a long-overdue conversation about the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vows

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by Miss_M, all mistakes are mine.

For the first time since she left Winterfell five days ago, Brienne is truly warm. A fire burns merrily in the hearth at the far end of the common room, and the Northerners clustered around it fill the air with chatter, laughter, and song. 

There is a Stark in Winterfell again. A ray of light in the darkness. 

Brienne sips from a mug of mulled wine, relishing its warmth against her cold hands and in her belly. Once her feet thaw and she eats, she will be perfectly content. 

The innkeeper, a pinched, wary woman with a dirk hanging from her belt, sweeps past collecting empty cups. “Your room’s ready,” she says gruffly. “End of the hall.”

Jaime holds up a bright copper star as she passes him. “Might you have a bit of soap to spare?” He offers his most charming smile, white teeth flashing, as the woman plucks the coin from his fingers. In a low, conspiratorial tone, he adds, “Last night my wife mistook me for a bear.”

Brienne freezes with the mug halfway to her lips.  _ My wife. _ Not  _ my lady  _ as he has always called her since the Riverlands. Unlike Lady Sansa, who never stopped scowling when Jaime kissed Brienne or shared her bedroll on their long travels, the smallfolk they’ve met do not judge what happens in their room. As long as Jaime’s coin is good and they make no trouble, most care little that they shelter the infamous Kingslayer and his whore. 

Jaime has no reason to lie, and the deceit makes Brienne’s cheeks burn.

The innkeeper seems immune to his charms. Perhaps she does care that a Lannister sups at her table. The woman glances at Brienne, and her frown lifts slightly. She tucks the coin in her pocket as she moves away from them. 

With effort, Brienne brings the cup to her lips and drinks, the cinnamon a pleasant burn on her tongue. Jaime is more relaxed and content than she’s seen him in days. He’s never liked the cold, complaining bitterly in the mornings as they saddled the horses, and again in the evenings as he piles every blanket, fur, and cloak they have atop them, his body pressed tightly to Brienne’s.

As Jaime watches her, his posture changes, his expression shifts. He's appraising her the way he looks at his soldiers. “Brienne,” he finally prods. "Stop thinking so loudly and tell me what is making you scowl." 

“I am not your wife,” she rebukes, so softly she’s not sure he will hear her.

“Is that all?” Jaime sighs. “You are. In every way that matters.”

Brienne glances around, uneasy talking around strangers, but no one pays them any mind. “Not in the eyes of gods or men.” Her voice is quiet but firm. Though they have shared a bed since White Harbor, giving Jaime her maidenhead was not calculated to wrest any promises from him. 

He shakes his head, leans closer. “Speak plainly, wench. Not in  _ your  _ eyes. Will you leave me, then, when we reach Hornwood?”

Brienne says nothing. Between her face, her armor, and her tattered reputation, she does not expect any more from a man than what she has right now. Why would Brienne leave him?  She has always expected Jaime to leave. Becoming lovers did not change that, nor did his exile and dismissal from the Kingsguard. Some day, Jaime will stop seeking her bed, the novelty of her size and strength worn thin, her innocence long since shed in her eagerness to please him. 

The innkeeper returns and sets two trenchers in front of them. Brienne digs in eagerly. The stew is hot, the meat swimming in the thin gravy is gamey but fresh enough. She hasn’t eaten since they broke their fast early this morning, and the wine is making her dizzy. 

Jaime watches her, waiting for an answer she will not give. Brienne can feel the weight of his gaze on her, see the hurt in his eyes when she glances up at him. Finally Jaime relents and starts eating. Brienne finishes quickly, leaves him alone at the table while she escapes upstairs. 

The wind whistles through the loose windowpane, making the single candle flame dance. Brienne washes with a thin sliver of lye soap and a bowl of fire-warmed snowmelt. She remembers Winterfell with longing, its hot springs and baths. Remembers Harrenhal, the last place she looked at Jaime and saw the Kingslayer. 

Chilled and exhausted, Brienne climbs into bed and tries to rest, but Jaime’s question won’t leave her mind. How can he think  _ she  _ would leave  _ him_? Perhaps Jaime truly believes that he could be happy wed to her. He has always been able to fool himself. Brienne has not had that luxury since Red Ronnet threw a rose at her feet. 

She can not afford to fret over Jaime’s affections or what may happen when winter releases its grip on the North. Lady Sansa’s hold on Winterfell is still tenuous, and men she can trust are few. After Lady Hornwood’s death, her castle was held by Bolton men. The last troops fled after Roose Bolton’s demise, leaving the castle undefended and its people vulnerable. Sansa gave Brienne and Jaime command of soldiers tasked with bringing the Hornwood lands under Winterfell’s protection. The Stark soldiers are encamped a short walk from the inn. 

Lady Sansa’s real intent is unspoken but plain to see. Stark bannermen will not tolerate a Lannister in Winterfell, not even one they dismiss as Lady Stark’s pet lion. Brienne is grateful to have purpose and protection for the winter. The seas are too rough to return to Tarth now, even if her father had need of her. He doesn’t. Lord Selwyn gave Brienne up for dead after Hoat refused his ransom offer of 300 dragons. By the time the Elder Brother sent Lord Selwyn word that Brienne lived, her father had wed one of his bannermen’s daughters. The girl has already given Lord Selwyn a healthy son. Brienne sometimes forgets that she is no longer her father’s heir, feels grateful when she remembers that burden has been lifted.

She wakes sometime later to the sounds of boots thumping against the floor and water sloshing. Jaime takes a while to undress and wash, but Brienne knows better than to offer help. 

The straw mattress dips as Jaime sits on the bed, but he does not touch her. “Brienne, I have thought of you as my wife for some time.” 

Brienne opens her eyes, notes his slumped shoulders in the flickering candlelight, his hair dark and damp as it curls against his nape. “You never said a word. Why now?” 

“A Lannister wedding in Winterfell? Lord Manderly would sooner bake me into a pie. They can keep their ceremonies and their gods.” 

Jaime turns to face her. “The Seven want nothing to do with me, if they exist at all. The Starks’ bloody weirwoods like me no better, and all the Red God wants is my blood. You’ve killed for me, lain with me, not left my side in close to a year. I jumped in front of a bloody bear for you, bent the knee to a Stark before every remaining lord in the North. How could a pious fool’s prayers bind us to each other more than that?”

He makes it sound so simple. The smallfolk set up house and see a visiting septon sometime later, but Brienne has always expected ( _dreaded_ ) a noble marriage, a spectacle to unite Houses. Neither of them stand heir to their Houses anymore, Jaime a mere hedge knight and Brienne a lady unlikely to make an advantageous union. Still, Brienne never truly believed she would find a man who wanted to wed her, and has never allowed herself to dream of a future with Jaime.

Brienne pulls back the furs, shivering as the cold air works its way under her shift. She is naked beneath it, her smallclothes washed and hung up to dry overnight. “Get in bed, Jaime. We have a long ride ahead of us.”

"Get in bed, Jaime," he echoes, his tone far more suggestive. "You weren’t always so bold.” Jaime touches her then, fingertips ghosting along a pale expanse of muscular thigh. 

Brienne's face heats with the memory. Their first night together, she expected what she’d often glimpsed in Renly’s camp: a quick, rough tumble, a release of the tension simmering between them. But Jaime did not treat her like a camp follower, nor did he blow out the candles and imagine his golden, vanished sister in her place. The tenderness he showed Brienne was nearly as overwhelming as the pleasure she found with him.  

Now, Jaime’s touch is fleeting. He lays down and pulls the furs over them both. He makes no move to hold her, does not speak again. 

Brienne is used to sleeping with Jaime’s arms around her, the rise and fall of his breathing against her back. His absence weighs on her. She rolls over, wraps her hand around his forearm, tucks her chin against his shoulder. “I won't leave you,” she promises. 

Jaime releases a deep breath, presses his lips to her forehead. “If you don’t want my name, I don’t blame you.”

Her throat tightens at his self-deprecating tone. The Lannister name is more likely to earn a dagger in the back than a smile in the North, despite all that Jaime has done for Lady Sansa.

“I chose to come to your bed, Jaime. You need not wed me.” His insistence on defending her honor baffles her, now more than ever. Jaime took nothing she didn’t give willingly.

He kisses her ruined cheek, the corner of her mouth. "If all I wanted was a fuck, I could have tavern girls." 

Brienne grimaces. Jaime’s blunt speech and quick temper caused them problems often enough on the road, but she has never known him to flirt with servants or spend his coin on whores. "What do you want, then?"

His hand on her hip makes her jump. Jaime chuckles at that, fingers drawing circles on the shift for a few seconds before pushing the fabric aside to stretch his hand across her skin.

“I want the woman I love," he says softly, his breath warm on her ear as he nuzzles her cheek. Even after all this time, Brienne is still surprised by the way desire roughens his voice, how he can’t seem to get close enough to her. 

His hand curves across her bottom and up to the small of her back. “The most stubborn, honorable, loyal, honest—” 

She winces, still sickened by the few minutes she lied to him at Pennytree before the truth came pouring out of her, but Jaime pulls back until she can see his face, and repeats, “— _ honest_, brave wench I’ve ever known.” 

His gaze is direct, unflinching, and she wants to look away, to correct him. Brienne recognizes herself only in  _ stubborn_, and only then because she’s been told that so often, by men who want her to be something other than what she is. 

“Why else would I still be here, in this godsforsaken frozen waste surrounded by Northmen who’d sooner spit on me than obey my orders?” Jaime grins. “If you wanted to go back to White Harbor, find a ship to Braavos, I wouldn’t object.”

When Brienne was young, she dreamed of a handsome, heroic knight asking for her hand. Before her septa showed her the truth, that tall, ugly Brienne of Tarth was not Jonquil, or Elenei, or Naerys. But Jaime does not seem to care that she is large, scarred, unladylike. 

“I’d follow you anywhere, Brienne.” Jaime’s hand settles between her breasts, warm and solid over her heart. “You have my sword, my honor, and my love.” 

Brienne covers Jaime’s hand with her own, sliding her fingers between his. "You have my sword, my trust, and my love," she answers, voice growing stronger with each word. 

A slow smile spreads across Jaime’s face. "Careful, those almost sounded like vows."

Brienne kisses him, heart pounding, whispers against his ear, "My Jaime."

He shivers, clutches her hand tighter.

“My husband.” 

Vows no septon would hear, no weirwood would witness. Vows for the two of them alone. 

 


End file.
